A recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a great change in the way we read and think. The scholar found that people using the sites 【小题1】“a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely 【小题2】 to any source they'd already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would move to another site. Sometimes they'd save a long article, but there is no evidence that they ever want back and actually read it.

Thanks to the existence of text on the Internet, not to mention the 【小题3】 of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it's a different kind of reading.” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts 【小题4】 and efficiency above all else, may be 【小题5】 our capacity for the kind of reading that 【小题6】 when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose common.

When we read online, she says, we tend to become 【小题7】 decoders of information. Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental 【小题8】 that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged. Reading, explains Wolf, is not a(n)【小题9】 skill for human beings. It is not rooted in our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the 【小题10】 characters we see into the language we understand.

The best bosses know how to subtract work

Companies are used to celebrating addition. Profits, customers and share prices should go up rather than fall. Innovation is the adding of new products. Larger numbers are a measure of career success.

Firms are not always opposed to subtraction. There are good kinds of cuts. Reducing costs is a necessary part of management, though not a welcome one. But the value of doing less is 【小题1】. The best bosses are those who take things away as well as add them on.

That means 【小题2】 time for employees to get work done. Meetings are almost always called by bosses. Some are useful; many of them are not.

Shopify, an e-commerce firm, began the year by deleting 12,000 meeting s from corporate calendars, and asking everyone to think carefully before 【小题3】 them. The company reports a rise in productivity as a result of the 【小题4】.

The only thing worse than having too many meetings is not being invited to them at all. So whenever meetings take place, 【小题5】 large numbers of people can turn up. Minus-minded managers will give employees permission not to attend if they are not needed.

Good bosses, 【小题6】, will send messages when necessary, not every time a bright idea pops into their head. They will reduce the tempo of work, by leaving employees time to concentrate. They will be clear if something is urgent or not.

Subtraction is not just about removing day-to-day distractions. It’s also about taking decisions to kill off projects and products that are going nowhere, and to focus efforts on the most important bits of the business.

In “The Case for Good Jobs”, a new book, Zeynep Ton of MIT Sloan School of Management argues that doing less can often make 【小题7】 sense. Costco, a well-regarded American retailer has a deliberately limited product 【小题8】. That means it can focus its buying power more effectively, forecast demand more accurately and use its employees’ time more productively.

Less may not sound like a great outcome for customers, but at some point choice is deeply 【小题9】. When you have spent more time trying to decide what to watch on a streaming service than it takes to go to the cinema and watch “Oppenheimer” twice, 【小题10】 seems pretty attractive.

Surfing the Internet during class doesn't just steal focus from the educator, it also hurts students who're already 【小题1】 to grasp the material. A new study from Michigan State University, though, argues that all students-including high achievers-see a 【小题2】 in performance when they browse the Internet during class for non-academic purposes.

To measure the effects of Internet-based distractions during class, researchers 【小题3】 500 students taking an introductory psychology class at Michigan State University. Researchers used ACT scores as a 【小题4】of intellectual abilities. Because previous research has shown that people with high intellectual abilities are better at 【小题5】 out distractions, researchers believed students with high ACT scores would not show a 【小题6】 decrease in performance due to their use of digital devices. But students who surfed the web during class did worse on their exams regardless of their ACT scores, suggesting that even the academically smartest students are harmed when they re distracted in class.

College professors are increasingly raising alarm bells about the effects smartphones, laptops, and tablets have on academic performance. One 2013 study of college students found that 80% of students use their phones or laptops during class, with the average student checking their digital device 11 times in a 【小题7】 class. A quarter of students report that their use of digital devices during class causes their grades to 【小题8】.

Professors sometimes implement policies 【小题9】 to minimize students' use of digital devices, and some instructors even confiscate (没收) tablets and phones. In a world where people are increasingly dependent on their phones, though, such strategies often fail. One international study found that 84% of people say they couldn't go a day without their smartphones. Until students are able to 【小题10】 the pull of social networking, texting, and endlessly surfing the web, they may continue to struggle in their classes.